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Summary

Description

Edward J W Dakers, 1909. Single storey, roughly rectangular-plan symmetrical Jacobean-style school with advanced shouldered gables to 3 elevations, stone-mullioned multi-light windows, Girls' and Boys' entrances and slightly bell-cast roof. Squared, snecked bull-faced red sandstone with polished red sandstone ashlar dressings. Base course to principal elevations; projecting window cills; moulded eaves course; stop-chamfered window mullions and margins. Raised gable apices to S E and W with curved tops. Windows to all gables have central transomed and mullioned bipartite window with tall lower lights and small upper lights flanked by single tall lights to each side; round-arched hoodmoulds to all gable windows except those to N elevation.

FURTHER DETAILS: symmetrical principal elevation to S with advanced gable to centre and slightly lower piend-roofed blocks to each side; pupils' entrances to inner bays of piend-roofed section (girls to left, boys to right) with chamfered architecraves and bracketed pediments; tripartite windows to outer bays. Almost identical elevations to E and W with advanced gable to centre, 3-window piend-roofed block to S and 3-bay section to N with central bipartite gable-headed window breaking eaves. 3 joined unornamented gables to N elevation with curved copes linking each gable. Predominantly 4-pane glazing in timber sash and case windows. Central cylindrical louvered roof vent with shallow ogee cap and cast-iron finial. Graded greenish slate roof with decorative red terracotta ridge tiles. Cast-iron rainwater goods, possibly by Walter MacFarlane & Co at Saracen Foundry (see Notes) with decorative hoppers dated 1909.

INTERIOR: central top-lit hall surrounded by classrooms on each side. Some timber-boarded panelling to dado. Half-glazed timber-panelled interior doors.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: coped, snecked, bull-faced sandstone boundary walls with cast-iron railings above; rusticated gatepiers with scroll-bracketed caps to S, plain pyramidal-capped gatepiers to N entrance.

Statement of Special Interest

A well-detailed and little-altered school building occupying a relatively prominent position on the edge of Thornhill. The school was erected to replace the smaller and earlier school building next door (listed at category B) and the internal layout reflects not only the population growth that must have occurred in Thornhill at this time but also the change in educational practices from teaching all pupils in one large school room to teaching smaller groups of roughly similar age and ability in classrooms. By 1909, when this school was built, the latter arrangement had become standard practice and the change was well over-due. The style and arrangement of the school building was fairly common for its date and situation in a small country town, but the detailing is well-handled and the proportions good. Nothing is known about the architect who is presently only known to have designed one other building, Noblehill School in Dumfries, which was built in 1904.

The dated rainwater goods are particularly worthy of note. They all have a maker's mark, but this has been over-painted too many times to be legible. However, the diamond-shape of the mark suggests that they were made by Walter MacFarlane and Company, at Saracen Foundry in Glasgow. By the early 20th century MacFarlane's was not only the most prolific ironfounders in Glasgow, but the whole world, and produced everything from railings and rainwater goods to prefabricated buildings.

References

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